‘Tolling, gonging, calling’

Monson, Maine, in 1905

“The rolling, winding roads away from Bangor [Maine] took us through towns with names like Charleston, Dover-Foxcroft, Monson, and Shirley, all with their own quaint, beautifully cinematic set dressing. It was like each was curated from grange hall flea markets and movie sets rife with small-town Americana. Stoic stone war memorials. American flags. Whitewashed, chipping town hall buildings from other centuries. Church bell towers in the actual process of tolling, gonging, calling. To me, the sound was ominous in a remote sort of way, unnamable.”

― Katie Lattari, in her thriller novel Dark Things I Adore

In Charleston, Maine: buildings of the former Higgins Classical Institute, a college-preparatory boarding school that existed from 1837 to 1975.